I have a 2009 Gibson SG that has a PCB I'd like to remove and install wiring within. I have built some DIY guitar pedal stuff but have never touched a guitar's wiring. I'll be installing a Lace Drop and Gain humbuckers - the bridge is -$38 on amazon! and they are offering an 15% additional audio harmony discount: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NAHQKMM.

If Lace suggests 250k pots, I’d go with 250k pots. I personally like audio taper for volume controls and linear taper for tone controls. And then you’ll need two capacitors for your tone controls. I use .047m for most everything and get good results from the sprague orange drop caps.

kosta wrote:If Lace suggests 250k pots, I’d go with 250k pots. I personally like audio taper for volume controls and linear taper for tone controls. And then you’ll need two capacitors for your tone controls. I use .047m for most everything and get good results from the sprague orange drop caps.

I like 68n (.068 or 683) in most guitars. The difference isn't that extreme. Lace sensors are definitely a different animal, so as we said before, go with what they recommend. I've read 500k makes them harsh as hell..

thanks guys - ended up with a Lace Hammer Claw neck and Drop and Gain bridge

I received the following from Lace

All Lace pickups are designed and developed around 250 pots and.022 caps. However, most users replacing humbucker pickups simply do not bother to switch them out and roll with the 500k pots and .047 caps in their instruments. Gibson and ESP do the same. They seem very happy with the outcome. The major difference is that higher value pots bring additional brilliance to the top end and drastically reduce the amount of taper/roll-off (no Strat volume swells). So it really comes down to a matter of taste, preference, the amp you use, the guitar, pedals and style(s) of music one performs.

You don’t have to remove the pcb. Pull out the old pickups and solder the earth of the new pickups to the back of the pot and the hot wire onto the first prong of the pot. Totally reversible and there’s nothing wrong with the pots and board that’s there. And save money and effort.

If you've built your own pedals before this will be super easy, and it's also much cheaper to just get the parts you need separately. Four short split shaft 250k CTS pots should be like 20 bucks, 2 decent .022 caps (orange drops are solid) for another 5.

One tip - you'll have to solder some stuff to the back of the pots for grounding. I like to scratch part of it up a little bit with something pointy to make sure the solder takes easily.

I also highly recommend scratching up the back of the pot with the tip of a file or an x-acto knife. Otherwise you'll bake the fuck out of the pot and the solder will just sit there in a little blob..

Also I recommend the Panasonic greenies for "tone" caps since 600v or whatever is way over rated for the miniscule voltages produced by a guitar pickup. Any of them will work though.. just don't cheap out on ceramic drops

I might not be in the majority here, but I really like the way 1meg pots sound with high gain lace pickups. I've used them with drop'n gains, finger burners, and dissonant aggressors, and it really opens them up.

I recently got my Gibson SG back from a great Luthier who installed a Lace Hammerclaw in the neck position and a Lace Drop and Gain installed in the bridge position.

The electronics pcb was pulled out and new 250k pots,.022 caps, and wiring were installed. A push/pullpot was installed in the tone for each pickup and I asked for coil splitting. The pickups sounds phenomenal, just what I was looking for, but I can't hear any change in tone when the tone pot is pulled out into the coil splitting position. The only time I can hear a change is when I begin to gain stack multiple pedals; at extreme gain the noticeable single coil hum is audible when the tone pot is pulled out and the hum goes away when the tone put it pushed back in. At these gain levels I'm not even sure if the full humbucker vs coil split tones would even be noticeable.

Now I know these high output Lace humbuckers are quite different compared to your normal Gibson humbucker, and further, I tune to Drop C.

I took several pictures of the wiring; the white/black and green wires are soldered to the volume pots, white and orange/black wires are wired to the center lugs of the tone push/pull pot, and bottom lugs of the tone push/pull pot appear to get grounded out.

So you're saying they still sound like humbuckers when you split the coil into the supposed single coil mode? I know the way lace sensors are made they are not supposed to have any volume drop in single coil mode but it should still change the sound.. I'll study the drawings a little.

I'm also assuming your push pull pots only have an up and a down position right? Two of those lace wiring schematics are for 3 position toggles.

BetterOffShred wrote:So you're saying they still sound like humbuckers when you split the coil into the supposed single coil mode? I know the way lace sensors are made they are not supposed to have any volume drop in single coil mode but it should still change the sound.. I'll study the drawings a little.

I'm also assuming your push pull pots only have an up and a down position right? Two of those lace wiring schematics are for 3 position toggles.

Thank you, please let me know if I can provide any more pictures or wiring information to assist you. Very much appreciated. The humbuckers do not change when the push pull pots , which are only two position, are engaged. I tried comparing the wiring set up to the Lace diagrams but wasn't able to make any progress. It seems the way mine were wired is quite different.

I have only briefly skimmed the pics but it looks like yours are wired to simply ground one coil of the pickup rather than allowing it run series or parallel with the other coil... could be wrong. I'll spend a little time thinking about it and looking at other coil tap scenarios